Monday, November 15, 2010

Victoria in Victoria

In addition to visiting the Royal BC Museum last week, I also spent a bit of time wandering around Victoria. It is a very pleasant city and it was nice to wander near the ocean again, even if only for a day.

Hey! That person has the same name as me or something.

This is the Fairmont Empress Hotel, something of a landmark in Victoria. Also note the presence of a palm tree in Canada.

I stopped by the Pacific Undersea Gardens, which seems to have bad reviews on a lot of tourist sites, but that I rather liked. You go down a cool tunnel and view fish in what is essentially a fenced-off portion of the harbour. It's all sealife that can be found in the area, so they aren't necessarily as showy as tropical fish, but it was very interesting. There were lingcod, spiny rock cod, a silvery school of salmon, anemones, bright purple starfish, and kelp. The neatest part of the experience is the live theatre, where every hour a scuba diver enters part of the tank at one end of the boat and shows off crabs and starfish, feeds the fish, and plays with the amazing wolf eel (named Eli) and giant pacific octopus (named Armstrong).

Here's some video I took of the dive show! I was very excited to see the octopus. This was the first time I've seen a live octopus that I wasn't about to eat.

I remember being to this place a very long time ago. I didn't get to go to the live theater because I misunderstood "theater" as in "movie theater". Back then I was very frightened of loud noises, including that from movies, so I avoided going to the movies when I could.

By the way, there used to be a place in Victoria called Crystal Garden that was a conservation center with displays of tropical rainforest animals. The building's still there, but the displays have been closed down.